Named for Donald Arleigh Sinclair, curator emeritus of Special Collections, the Sinclair New Jersey Collection is the largest, most comprehensive collection of New Jersey materials in the state and one of the finest collections of state and local history in the country. The over 70,000 monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and serials in the collection cover broad subject areas. A vast number of topics are represented, including state, county and municipal history, genealogy, religion, business and industry, labor, education, architecture, literature, medicine, agriculture, science and technology, political science, ethnic studies, gender studies, art, music, and bibliography. Due to its breadth and depth, the collection is an indispensable resource for research on any aspect of New Jersey, past or present.
Finding materials in the Sinclair New Jersey Collection
Collections with finding aids are searchable in ArchivesSpace.
Cataloged items
A significant portion of the collection includes non-fiction, fiction set in New Jersey, poetry, rare books, pamphlets and periodicals that are cataloged individually and searchable in QuickSearch.
Uncataloged items
Portions of the Sinclair New Jersey Collection are uncataloged and do not appear in QuickSearch, including annual reports and some periodicals and pamphlets.
Many of the older periodicals and annual reports, often single or just several issues, are listed in two checklists that are no longer updated:
- A Checklist of New Jersey Periodicals in the Special Collections Department, Rutgers University (1982)
- A Union List of New Jersey Annual Publications in the Library Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society and Rutgers University (1977)
Checklists for other uncataloged collections are available by contacting SC/UA or at the New Jersey Reading Room reference desk. We are continually working to convert checklists into finding aids, which we then add to ArchivesSpace.
For information about other printed and visual formats held by SC/UA pertaining to New Jersey, view the descriptions of Broadsides, Newspapers, Maps, and Photographs and Prints.